Before you begin

Note: If you don't plan to keep the
resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of
selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can
delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

Explore the sample data

This tutorial uses a dataset available through the
Google Cloud Platform Public Dataset Program.
A public dataset is any dataset that is stored in BigQuery and
made available to the general public. The public datasets are datasets that
BigQuery hosts for you to access and integrate into your
applications. Google pays for the storage of these datasets and provides public
access to the data via a
project. You pay only for the queries that
you perform on the data (the first 1 TB per month is free, subject to
query pricing details).

The Global Hurricane Tracks (IBTrACS) dataset

The historical positions and intensities along the tracks of global tropical
cyclones (TC) are provided by NOAA’s International Best Track Archive for
Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS). Tropical cyclones are known as hurricanes in the
north Atlantic and northeast Pacific ocean basins, typhoons in the northwest
Pacific ocean basin, cyclones in the north and south Indian Ocean basins, and
tropical cyclones in the southwest Pacific ocean basin.

IBTrACS collects data about TCs reported by international monitoring centers who
have a responsibility to forecast and report on TCs (and also includes some
important historical datasets). Presently, IBTrACS includes data from 9
different countries. Historically, the data describing these systems has
included best estimates of their track and intensity (hence the term, best
track).

You can start exploring this data in the GCP Console by
viewing the details of the hurricanes table:

Query the path of hurricane Maria in 2017

In this section of the tutorial, you run a standard SQL query that finds the
path of hurricane Maria in the 2017 season. To plot the hurricane's path, you
query the hurricane's location at different points in time.

Query details

The following standard SQL query is used to find the path of hurricane Maria.

When the query completes, click See results. You can also click step two
Define columns.

This moves you to step two. In step two, for Geometry column, choose
point. This plots the points corresponding to hurricane Maria's path.

Format your visualization

The Style section provides a list of visual styles for customization. Certain
properties apply only to certain types of data. For example, circleRadius
affects only points.

Supported style properties include:

fillColor — The fill color of a polygon or point. For example,
"linear" or "interval" functions can be used to map numeric values to a color
gradient.

fillOpacity — The fill opacity of a polygon or point. Values must be
in the range zero — one where 0 = transparent and 1 = opaque.

strokeColor — The stroke or outline color of a polygon or line.

strokeOpacity — The stroke or outline opacity of polygon or line.
Values must be in the range zero — one where 0 = transparent and 1
= opaque.

strokeWeight — The stroke or outline width in pixels of a polygon or
line.

circleRadius — The radius of the circle representing a point in
pixels. For example, a "linear" function can be used to map numeric values
to point sizes to create a scatterplot style.

Each style may be given either a global value (applied to every result) or a
data-driven value (applied in different ways depending on data in each result
row). For data-driven values, the following are used to determine the result:

function — A function used to compute a style value from a field's
values.

identity — The data value of each field is used as the styling
value.

categorical — The data values of each field listed in the domain are
mapped one to one with corresponding styles in the range.

interval — Data values of each field are rounded down to the nearest
value in the domain and are then styled with the corresponding style in the
range.

linear — Data values of each field are interpolated linearly across
values in the domain and are then styled with a blend of the corresponding
styles in the range.

field — The specified field in the data is used as the input to the
styling function.

domain — An ordered list of sample input values from a field. Sample
inputs (domain) are paired with sample outputs (range) based on the given
function and are used to infer style values for all inputs (even those not
listed in the domain). Values in the domain must have the same type (text,
number, and so on) as the values of the field you are visualizing.

range — A list of sample output values for the style rule. Values in
the range must have the same type (color or number) as the style property you
are controlling. For example, the range of the fillColor property should
contain only colors.

To format your map:

Click Add styles in step two or click step 3 Style.

Change the color of your points. Click fillColor.

In the fillColor panel:

Click Data driven.

For Function, choose linear.

For Field, choose usa_wind.

For Domain, enter 0 in the first box and 150 in the
second.

For Range, click the first box and enter #0006ff in the Hex
box. Click the second box and enter #ff0000. This changes the color
of the point based on the wind speed. Blue for lighter winds and red for
stronger winds.

Examine your map. If you hover on one of your points, the point's weather
data is displayed.

Click fillOpacity.

In the Value field, enter .5.

Examine your map. The fill color of the points is now semi-transparent.

Change the size of the points based on the hurricane's radius. Click
circleRadius.

In the circleRadius panel:

Click Data driven.

For Function, choose linear.

For Field, choose radius_50kt.

For Domain, enter 0 in the first box and 135 in the
second.

For Range, enter 5 in the first box and 15 in the second.

Examine your map. The radius of each point now corresponds to the radius of
the hurricane.

Close Geo Viz.

Cleaning up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud Platform account for
the resources used in this tutorial:

You can delete the project you created.

Or you can keep the project for future use.

To delete the project:

Caution: Deleting a project has the following effects:

Everything in the project is deleted. If you used an existing project for
this tutorial, when you delete it, you also delete any other work you've done in the project.

Custom project IDs are lost.
When you created this project, you might have created a custom project ID that you want to use in
the future. To preserve the URLs that use the project ID, such as an appspot.com
URL, delete selected resources inside the project instead of deleting the whole project.

If you plan to explore multiple tutorials and quickstarts, reusing projects can help you avoid
exceeding project quota limits.